


The man behind the glass

by laughingpineapple



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Implied Dale/Harry, Implied Harry/Josie, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 07:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10963020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: Which is, by definition, not the smartest hiding place in town. Harry owes Albert a drink at the Roadhouse, Albert doesn't technically owe Harry a talk but was never one to shut up anyway.





	The man behind the glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amatara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amatara/gifts).



The two of them were sitting there in the low red-tinted lights, at a table right under the stage, like two stock figures from a footnote in classic comedy that only a regrettable cultural hiccup must have prevented from populating the annals of our history. Not unlike Harlequin and his cohorts, surely they had potential, the cowboy and the black suit, lost in a staring contest in a pub at the edge of the woods while, miles away, the last flight to Seattle took off and closed the curtains on civilization for the day, minus one passenger left to the wolves.

The suit's stare was as poised and pointed as the stuff of legend, one of the classics, meant to underline how the cowboy, who was a symbol of simpler values and simpler times, had no right, no capacity, no building blocks in his DNA for the shit-eating grin he was presently displaying.

 

“You see, Albert”, he said, the cowboy, and grabbed his beer like there were precious few things in life that were good and certain and his drink was one of them. “You make a love declaration, you get a date. That's just how it works.”

“Watch out for your girlfriend, Casanova”, said Albert, who had agreed to a  _ drink _ and very much preferred to be the one who calls the semantic shots. 

“I sure will! And you your special agent!”

 

And so it was that within the span of five words, this drink or date or other semantic trifle which had started as a rustic white flag, a peace offer when recent bruises still burned on Albert's face and which, in all fairness, had been sailing rather smoothly for a while before this tipping point, went kaputt. Before Harry knew it, Albert was entrenched behind his glass, cutting all tethers, denying any chance that the special agent in their lives could be “his” by any stretch of the imagination. Which was an interesting development in Harry's eyes, given how his imagination had been most aptly compared (by Hawk) to that of a particularly uncreative chicken and how Albert still behaved like a weird appendage to their most special of agents, Dale Cooper. That's how they met, after all, with Albert gallivanting into his station like he owned the place by virtue of Coop being in it, or claiming the territory so that Coop would follow, or other variations on the theme of territorial prickliness Harry felt not well versed enough in zoology to decipher and label. But while Coop was growing more accustomed to the town's rhythms with every passing day, Albert remained Albert, alert and venomous, and Harry, in his role as an authority figure for his community as well as a man flattered by an earnest “I love you” growled to his face, had asked him out. To chat, to gain a foothold into the maze that were Albert's thoughts, to offer some understanding of his own.

 

What he found instead was a nuke button. People, Harry figured, displayed like a peacock as a deterrent. He didn't have to look back far to fetch a dozen memories of Nadine walking into the RR with an iron grip on Big Ed's arm. This read as one and the same to him, and really, people are people in Twin Peaks just like in faraway fabled Philadelphia. The topic was clear enough to him, but, wouldn't you know it, Albert had curled up behind his glass, which rather appropriately made his face look as red as a beet. He was also barking something, but if there was something that Harry had already learned about Albert's complaints, it was when to listen and when to barely pay attention to the rhythm of it.

 

“Nothing wrong with that”, he said with a shrug and the placid posture of a cow, or at least of someone who hadn't been interrupted at all. “I envy the two of you.”

“You really don't.” For Albert's part, the sharp edge of his voice was honed by hopelessness, which had been hitting him slow and steady for some time before crushing down in flames at Pittsburgh. Coop's heart was with the dead. Some days the impossible competition almost felt reassuring.

“But I do.” Couldn't Albert see it? With his heart sworn to Josie, he couldn't even make a move. No matter that he was growing a second one filled with thoughts of Coop and didn't know where to put it in a stuffed and aching ribcage.

The singer's voice swayed along with their words. The other patrons had fallen silent, enchanted by her ballad, and as a spotlight panned across the hall one could almost believe that their pensive frowns and lucid eyes were equally split among those who had fallen for Albert's plight of a love that did not risk to be and those whose lives aligned with Harry's, who loved too much and could not share.

 

Then the song changed, and the chatter grew back to its usual buzz.

 

Harry's frown remained.

Harry, acting in his role as a pillar of his community, meaning that sometimes, when the stars were aligned, he knew how things connected and he knew which roots ran deep, asked Albert if he remembered that time with the swan.

“What, that time Coop was so intent on rattling off safety measures against vicious swan attacks that he almost stepped on a moorhen’s nest and was mauled by a bird barely as big as his hand, while the world's most narcoleptic swan watched from the middle of the pond? 'cause that sure was something. Fowl play for the ages. I remember just the two of us, for starters. If the prospect of Windom Earle jumping out of a bush at any given minute isn't bad enough, am I supposed to start being on the lookout for Stetson-wearing paparazzi?”

“Albert, it's the first time I hear this story.”

Which was enough to make him perk up from behind his makeshift shield, a feat Harry could be proud of. 

They were down at the Roadhouse the other night, Harry began to tell, him and Coop, sitting at that very table, same early March chill pleasantly shut outside by the pub's wooden doors, all nights at the Roadhouse end up the same, really. Thing is, Julee here, that's our singer, see, she started singing about swans. Dead swans, he gathered, which might've been a mood killer, but as luck would have it Coop latched onto the swan part instead of the dead part, and felt prompted to tell his own tale of that day at the park. Except, honest to God, his idea of that story was a long and fastidious enumeration of the virtues of Albert's hands as he took care of Coop's wounded foot. The stuff a grown man would blush to tell in public, but Coop, being Coop, kept waxing poetic for a solid three minutes before a waitress interrupted him and brought him back to earth. By the time he was done, Harry felt he could've read his palm without even looking.

 

Couldn't Albert see? He was part of Coop's life, in his thoughts even when they were miles apart. Wasn't this hope, for one of them at least?

Albert kept looking at him, with a pointed stare of disbelief, as the cowboy had no right and no capacity to offer him hope. Yet muscle by muscle, he relaxed. One sip at a time, he finished his wine. The glass was clear.

**Author's Note:**

> Belated wonderfulxstrange treat, for your prompt about seeing Albert and Dale's relationship from someone else's pov, turned into last-minute struggle... Promise to go back and edit as soon as I stop screaming this week. But I needed to put it up before... before the great unknown x_x I miss Harry already...
> 
> Also second fic set during a day of the original show that tries to make better use of the unofficial German titles than the actual episode did.


End file.
